This is a very quick note/needed edit later to make look legit/ a lot of misspellings and bad grammar. And this program does not have an auto spelling check so I tried my best. Will go back and edit it.
Here we go. Straight to the point.
I may die for any reason, but I do not want to be saved medically. I live enough and will die happily.
This is not a suicide note. I just want to make the note just in case.
I live a decent life. I am a "sort of" healthy 50-year-old woman with a lot of fake teeth at least three of them implanted/a lot of dandruff in my hair/ constipation here and there but not much/yeast infection sometimes but not much/pre-diabetic diagnosis like 10 years ago and I never go back to family Doctor to follow up for that matter. But I changed my diet / careful enough with food. I think that pre-diabetic condition helps me to eat better. Mostly cook for myself. No more MSG or salty food. Besides, Seattle food is not good, which is a good thing because it helps a lot for not overeating/or eating out.
I do not go to PCP much. I do not go for an annual check-up. I do not do blood tests if not needed. The last lab work was 7 ish years ago. No plan to have another one soon.
I cry a lot and laugh a lot as well. And I do breathing meditation every day, which helps to set up an "ok" mood for a whole day. And be frank, I do not have a good mood sometimes but I try to be in a good mood most of the time if I can.
I have a decent family. My husband is not perfect but a decent guy that I depend on for the last 20-some years for almost everything, you name it. From my monthly feminine hygiene to my application to MFA, MSW, and putting gas inside the car. From handling all of our money to hosting me and my friend parties. From taking care of the children when they were young to taking care of the children when they are young adults right now. And more. It is significantly incompetent when I have to disclose that I never put gas in the car since I came here to the US. But he makes me competent all the time by just saying that " You are beautiful."
If I have a next life, I think I could have the same husband as this one. We went and continue to go through a lot of storms, typhoons, tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes and family disasters together and it surely affect the children. But that is life. Childhood adversity will make children get stronger. We are completely different entities. When thinking that my partner is half of myself, you can picture me half yellow and half red, and very shark sharp teeth -like line right in the middle. That is me and him. But I will not ask him more for what he has done for me and the family.
He also made my big dreams come true. Going to the US for the best education and a good studio for me to practice my art. Who should ask for more?
I have two decent children. They are not perfect but they are good people and will do good for themselves and society. Son and daughter that I love dearly. They complete me as a mother. I will not be stopping loving them no matter what. And I have a dog named Happy. He is an anti-social type barking at other bigger dogs and sometimes at humans but very cute and emotional partner for everyone in our family.
Both of our families are good. I am lucky that I have good siblings who love me. My brother is good and has a lovely family. Same as my little sister. She took care of my mother when both I and my brother were not available, mostly me I was never available to take care of my mother when she was getting old and sick again. Both of my brother and sister have wonderful spouses. They are nice to me and treat me with respect.
My mother was good. I have plenty of Vietnamese blogs written about my mother. My father was good as well. At least now when I am more mature, I could look back and re-evaluate our relationship with my father and see he was a good father at some points in my life. I had a dream about my parents' reconciliation. They were so cute as my father wanted to ask my mother on a date and hesitated to do so. I see myself encouraging him by waiting with him at the outdoor restaurant he wanted to take my mother out. I also could see his brownish bicycle against the fence at the restaurant when he was waiting for my mother. It was a sweet dream that made me cried the day after. I drew the quick sketch so I can keep it for the rest of my life. I think that would be good enough to be pleased with my father and set my childhood trauma/drama to rest in peace.
Two of my nieces are very nice. My nephew is cute, tall and polite guy who about to go to high school.
My husband's family is nice. I am lucky that when I was married to him, I ended up married to the rest of the family and some of their childhood friends as well. They are supportive always. They are taking care of my son and now my daughter with open arms and unconditional love when she needs a time-out from her parents. Both of sister- in-laws are super nice to me. My brother-in-law is sweet and taking care of my daughter right now in LA.
Who wishes for more.
I have good career at this time, a 9 to 5 job that allows me to utilize all of my skills I have from the past until now. I can speak English, and translate into Vietnamese to Vietnamese clients. I can use knowledge from studying Vietnamese literatures to run virtual Vietnamese folklore group and then analyze the stories to focus on clinical/psycho therapy to Vietnamese clients. I have my own art therapy group and no one is in charge but me.
This 9 to 5 job allows me to have a lot of free time and a free mind to continue to practice my art at home (except when our clients have crises but not much). There are decent co-workers in a workplace with no discrimination experience, at least not for me or for now. As the only artist in the house, I am my own director of my made-up art program. Somehow it has come really useful for our client's healing.
Some of co-workers have become my best friends we hang out monthly and have become my husband's friends as well.
I am an artist not by choice but by blood. I never wanted to be an artist but trained by my mother when I was five. Tried to give up being artist several times and art always find a way to come back to me.
Same with my niece and my daughter. Art finds the way to reach them. All from my mother's pass-on gene. My niece was trained to be a chemist and now she wants to go to artchitech school. My daughter has an Instagram and Tiktok site when she posts her life experiences using Doodling which attracted a lot of followers and one of her post gained more than 8 million views.
I live in an art community that has a loft studio for all the artists. My studio has 12 tall windows with high ceilings and I have an absolute light source to fill up my entire studio.
Who wishes to have more than a source of good natural light if you are an artist. I am making art almost every day. I always have back-to-back or overlap projects that I am doing. Be happy just thinking about doing something is bliss.
I have a group of artists that are very supportive back in Berkeley. Who wishes for more.
I had decent education back there in Vietnam at least repaired a solid foundation and must- needed discipline for the rest of my life. Life in Vietnam was poor back there as my mother, a single artist/mother who has 20 years of living with leukemia, bravely raised three small kids by her own. We did not have a lot but enough food to be sustainable and grew into good and healthy enough human beings. My mother focused on education and strongly believed that education would carry us to go far and high.
Three of us managed to graduate from high school and my brother graduated from college. I dropped out in the middle of my third year of college to go to work. The job helped me to meet my husband and went to the US.
I went to the US and was lucky to be admitted to the best schools as UC Berkeley and UC Davis and UW. Spending more than 10 years studying in the US with a lot of student loans and still considered myself fortunated. Education in the US is one of the best. I love to study. It was not easy but it gets better when I keep going. Until now I love to listen to Youtube, very curious about almost everything. So many thing good from Youtube. Who needs to go to school if you have Youtube?
But going to schools here set up another layer of foundation that help me to do more research later on.
I had that experience and continue to cherish the time I spend in schools here. Priceless. Experiencing racist discrimination here and there but not major. And when I did have one major racial discrimination encounter, I had absolute good support behind me that helped me to overcome that.
That is good enough for me.
I am living almost equally half of 27 years in Vietnam and 23 years in the US. Living through a communist regime and now a Capitalist society. Both are not perfect systems but I got benefits from both during the up and down time. I could see that I have been learning quite a lot from both and benefit for my art creativity/learning and conducted business in my carreer/ job right now.
In my life, I never ever encountered " BAD" people. There are people that I do not like or associated with but I have never seen really bad people in my life. I know that I am a lucky person. I do not wish to bump into bad people in the future.
I do not have a lot of friends but good solid set of friends back there in VN and here in the US. Friends that I can be my true self when we hang out. Friends that can bring the best out of me. We laugh and curse a lot in both Vietnamese and English.
Who wishes for more.
I can die any time now with no complaints/no bucket list not even traveling places. Since COVID happened, things change as people stay local and connect virtually, I believe I can live happily without traveling that much like before.
I would never wish more for what I am having right now. I really love myself and appreciate myself. That is a very weird feeling but so true. Every night after a long deep meditation I fall to sleep thinking,
" I am ready to go in peace."
Looking back, I do not have any regret with how I am doing with my "human being" business. Being a decent human means you have a full-time job.
Things are up and down. A lot of time is undeniably messy and a lot of time turns out just ok. I have my laugh eventually that I am happy which is the way my life turns out right now.
We have a popular Vietnamese song called" Em ơi, sáu mươi năm cuộc đời."
Loosely translated as "Hey honey, one lifetime is 60 years."
We believe that you are up to 60 years, you have given a lifetime to fullfill your duty on Earth (hưởng dương).
(This is out of note focus: Dương is on Earth vs âm phủ is hell. As majority Vietnamese are Buddhist, we do not believe in Heaven ( Heaven concept like from Christianity), just live on Earth and when you die, you either go down to Hell or re-incarnate into something/or someone else. If you are really really ( I mean really good and know-how, you may liberate your life cycle and up to Buddha Land after being good for million times of being re-incarnated.)
You are lucky we live more than 60 years, you will be given opportunity to enjoy your bonus year (hưởng thọ). Thọ means longevity.
Sounded so depressing? Life is sufferings anyway. If we are human, suffering is human condition. So suck it up. Or feel less depressed when you compare to the US labor system, your scandalized retiring age is 65 or 67 or maybe 70 in the future when SSI benefits run out.
Note: The benefit already run out when the state of Washington asked us to pay into a system for long- term care 58 cents for every $100 we make next month in November. Or required everyone must has REAL ID in Oct. All of this shit costs money for no reason. So why not just suck it up and smile and feel happy and feel blessed. Be blessed without no reason is better than be pissed with a reason that out of my control.
Do I want to live longer than 60? It is not up to me, right? In my term, if I can be in the same condition like I am right now, I can think about 60. If I have bonus years, I will keep going.
But no IF. Why IF. why conditioning your life. You cannot negotiate with death anyway.
Anyway. I would say it again. Sometimes we do have a choice. Or that's what I think right now.
If something happened to me and I have to be rescued or saved. I will choose not to go any longer.
I will die happily as I am right now.
Note: I write in English not because I ditch Vietnamese but because it is much faster and easier to make a note like this in English.
